Socialist Aotearoa 4/06: Is this racism? A response to the cartoons - Auckland University Forum Thursday

Kia ora to all members and supporters of Socialist Aotearoa,

Things are getting better, things are getting worse. Things are definitely heating up.

We won an awesome victory late last week with Cotton On but SA's campaign against sweatshop death traps will continue through the winter as we turn our focus to Kmart. [ Read More ] Unite's campaign against McDonald's continues to burn. 

And in Istanbul we have seen the beginning of a social insurrection around the Gezi Park defence. As Paul Mason writes in a must read eyewitness report on the BBC website, 'To any student of social history the sight of an urban middle class using its fingers to dig up cobblestones, form a human chain and pile them 3ft (1m) high to make a barricade screams the words "Paris Commune".' The whirlwind of revolution returns...

But sadly over the last week we have witnessed explicitly racist political commentary on Mana's Feed the Kids Bill and the Government's decision to provide some Weetbix in selected low decile schools. Two cartoons by Al Nisbet in South Island newspapers showed a group of brown-skinned adults in school uniforms taking advantage of the breakfast in schools programme to save money for cigarettes, alcohol and pokies were published in the Marlborough Express last week. 

Our Race Relations Commissioner Susan Devoy says she found the cartoons personally offensive, but they were not racist. Go figure. Is this just another example of the right using racism and stigmatisation as a smokescreen to avoid talking about the real issues like jobs, housing and education? Or is this an indication that New Zealand is becoming increasingly divided along lines of class and ethnicity? SA memberCheyne Timmermans will lead us into the discussion with an analysis of class, colonisation and cruelty in Aotearoa and what the radical left can do to fight racism in the here and now.

Socialist Aotearoa Forum - Is this racism? A response to the Nisbett cartoons

When: 6pm,Thursday 6 June
Where: Room Eng3403, School of Engineering, Building No. 403., University of Auckland
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/129038687301424/

See you on the streets,
Socialist Aotearoa
www.socialistaotearoa.org

ENDS

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